Access your Pro+ Content below.

Know when to hold 'em...

... and know when to fold 'em--data files, that is. Regulatory compliance usually brings to mind data retention, but getting rid of old data or data that no longer must be retained may be an equal concern. Keeping data that should be dumped could prove perilous if your company finds itself on the short end of the litigation stick. Destroying data isn't easy; torching old tapes might effectively erase data, but it might not be official without a certificate of destruction. Services for verifying data destruction abound. Hightstown, NJ-based QSGI recently announced an audit and erasure program that can remove data from most leading vendors' disk products. QSGI can erase disk data with up to 99 overwrite passes. And if overwriting isn't enough, companies like E-Scrap Technologies in Bolingbrook, IL, offer disk-drive shredding as part of their disposal arsenal. The shredder can gobble up a variety of disk and tape types. E-Scrap will even recycle the results. --Rich Castagna

Midrange arrays are encroaching on enterprise storage territory. Today's high-end midrange arrays and low-end enterprise arrays might look very similar. Features like clustering, mirrored cache, replication and snapshots have trickled down from enterprise arrays, while low-priced SATA drives have moved up to enterprise arrays.

One of the raps against iSCSI storage is that it's not as secure as Fibre Channel SANs. But iSCSI can be as secure as you want it to be. It was built from the ground up with strong authentication and encryption capabilities that work … as long as they're used.

Over a period of just a few years, the amount you spend on support contracts could equal or even exceed the price of the product itself. But storage support contracts are usually optional, and both the extent of coverage and its cost are definitely negotiable. A little hard bargaining and creativity, along with the leverage of seeking maintenance from a third-party support company, can go a long way toward knocking down your support costs.

For the first time in five years, the amount of capacity storage managers plan to add this year dropped, according to the results of Storage magazine's latest Purchasing Intentions Survey. To be sure, the decrease was more of a sign that relief may be on the way for storage managers who have spent the last few years trying to keep up with runaway storage growth.

Columns
in this issue

Security is a cradle-to-grave commitment that spans products, processes and personnel. Microsoft has proved that you can turn on a dime and remedy security shortcomings, and now some leading storage vendors are following its example.

A huge portion of the issues we face today in storage and throughout our infrastructure are caused by us trying to use the same systems, architectures and methodologies we're used to for data that has all new requirements.

SharePoint's collaboration framework is gaining in popularity, but it has a number of data protection challenges that can result in significant levels of complexity rather quickly. Storage and data protection groups must work with application teams to plan an effective data protection strategy.